The rise of the Internet and networking technologies has resulted in the widespread transfer of code, data and files between computers. Transfer through the Internet and networking may be secured in a number of ways. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) are two of the primary methods used to secure transfers. Both SSL and S/MIME use encryption to secure transfers. The transferred code, data and/or files (“code”) are encrypted by the sender and decrypted by the receiver.
Secure transfers are, of course, rendered secure in order to make the code impenetrable to other applications and third parties. For example, encrypted code cannot be reviewed by a virus scanning application. The virus scanner cannot interpret the code and so cannot review the code for the presence of viruses. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an ability to review encrypted code.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide apparatus and methods for intercepting, examining and controlling code and its transfer through secure connections in an efficient and effective manner transparently or almost transparently to the end-user, with little or no operational effort required by the user.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide apparatus and methods that simply and effectively intercept, control, and/or examine incoming and outgoing secure code in an efficient and effective manner transparently or almost transparently to the end-user, with little or no operational effort required by the user.